Dr. Tim Noakes, best known in some circles for his research on hydration, is one of those who has in recent years publicly reversed his position and openly attacked soft-drink companies for their support of high-carbohydrate diets. In a January 2015 Primal Blueprint podcast, Noakes blamed high-carb diets for race fields crowded with “fat runners.”“We have a half-marathon in Cape Town, and we did a study on the field. We found that 30 percent of the runners in the field were insulin resistant and obese,” Noakes said.In a November 2014 Australian Broadcast Corporation interview, Noakes talked about his role in the overconsumption of sugar.

“I spent 33 years of my life telling athletes that they must carbohydrate load ... . And I was the first in the world to produce these GUs that people lived their races on. ... I apologize because that was completely wrong,” he said.

“GUs” are small packages of semi-solid energy paste, some with caffeine, that an endurance athlete can consume for an approximately 100-calorie infusion of carbohydrate. Noakes was referring specifically to Leppin FRN Squeezies, which he helped develop in the early 1980s. “FRN” was an initialism representing the inventors: F for Bruce Fordyce and R for Bernard Rose.